


Smashing Good Tunes

by ThePreciousHeart



Category: This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Real Events, Melodrama, Music, Phoebe Bridgers - Freeform, Saturday Night Live References, Zoom Meetings, guitar smashing, hate watching, in which two rock and roll has beens munch on sour grapes, moral outrage, social distancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 12:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29999304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePreciousHeart/pseuds/ThePreciousHeart
Summary: A young woman just smashed a perfectly good guitar on live television, and David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel aren't going to stand for it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Blue's Fic Drop Fridays





	Smashing Good Tunes

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is so five weeks ago, but that's how long it took to convince myself this is a funny idea and not a completely stupid one. You be the judge, though.

It took three tries for David St. Hubbins to successfully join the Zoom call, but once he had turned his camera on and unmuted himself, the first words out of Nigel’s mouth were, “Did you see it?” 

David squinted at his uncomfortably-bright screen. “Nice to see you too, Nigel.” Except there really wasn’t much to _see._ Nigel looked... well, there was really no better way to put it. _Like he’s being filmed with a potato_. David supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything less, given Nigel’s increasing embrace of a hermit-like existence. Frankly, he was more surprised that Nigel even knew what Zoom was. But after six years, give or take, without direct contact from his old friend and bandmate, he hadn’t expected his first sight of him to be such a… pixelated one. 

“Did you see it?” Nigel repeated, only his voice was so tinny and far-away-sounding that it came out as “did you _crackle crackle.”_ If it were anyone else on the Zoom call, David probably would have told them to try to reach him later, but since he and Nigel had gone so long without properly speaking to each other- and since he knew full well that Nigel’s tech problems would just get worse the more he tried to improve them- David supposed he could put up with it. _For now._

“See what? What are you on about?” The way Nigel was talking made it sound like there was an important news story that had escaped David’s attention. Most likely it had something to do with the band. Had there been a recent resurgence in Spinal Tap’s music? Perhaps someone on one of those singing shows had covered “Big Bottom.” But surely David would have known about such a thing long before Nigel ever got word of it. “Where are you calling from? Your connection is dreadful.” He tried to make out Nigel’s surroundings, but they were about as inscrutable as Nigel himself. _Has he still got the old inventing shed?_ Last he’d heard, Nigel had practically been living in there. If he had a computer, it was probably the one that IBM had furnished for him back in the 90’s. _Must have taken a considerable effort to run Zoom on that hunk of machinery._

Nigel’s voice was husky, his blank stare filling David’s screen. “I’ll show you what I’m on about.” Before David could get in a word, he turned on screen sharing. An Internet Explorer browser replaced his face, decorated with dozens of tabs. The open tab showed a YouTube video paused a minute before the end, featuring a pale girl in a black dress holding a guitar. The musicians surrounding her were dressed like skeletons. 

“What’s with the—” 

“ _Ssshh_.” Nigel enlarged the video to fullscreen and clicked play. It took a few seconds for the video to buffer, but once it did, a grotesque sight greeted David. The girl screamed as a cacophony of sound arose around her. She pulled off her guitar and began to beat it against a speaker on the floor, sending sparks flying. As disgusting as the act was, David couldn’t avert his gaze. He sat dumbfounded, waiting for someone to stop her, but no one did. Only when the clip ended did he recover his senses. 

“Christ.” Now it made sense why Nigel had called him so frantically this morning, begging him to hop on Zoom. _This is definitely worth interrupting my morning yoga_. “You might have given a _warning,_ Nigel.” 

Nigel mercifully ended the screen-share. Even through his webcam’s terrible quality, David could read his grim expression. “Oh, it gets worse. Every time I watch it, it gets worse. I was peeping through my fingers for that last bit.” 

“Well, don’t torture yourself.” David struggled to come up with an explanation for what he had just seen, but nothing made sense. “Who shot this? For that matter, who _posted_ this? Shouldn’t it go against YouTube’s guidelines?” 

“This aired in the States, Saturday night,” Nigel said. “Or... Sunday morning, really. SNL.” 

“God, that rotting corpse of a show?” _Calling it that is an insult to rotting corpses_. “I can’t believe it’s still on. It’s really gone down the toilet since the 80’s.” 

“They used to have _good_ bands on the show,” Nigel sighed. “Respectable bands.” 

“Like us!” 

“Exactly,” Nigel agreed. “Like us. Not some— some blonde _imp_ whose idea of a good time is to ram her guitar against a speaker like she’s clubbing a baby seal.” 

David frowned. “In that case, would the guitar be the club, or the seal?” 

“The seal, obviously! It’s the one being mauled, innit?” 

“Well, wouldn’t it make more sense if the guitar was the club? I mean, you wouldn’t swing a seal over your head if you’re looking to make an impact. In that case you might as well forget the club altogether. Not that I’d advocate for such terrorism, any more than I’d—” 

“That’s not the _point_.” Nigel’s voice wavered in a way that couldn’t be blamed on the bad connection. _“You can’t do that on live television, David.”_

“Of course you can’t,” David soothed. “It’s an outrage.” He paused. “So did you phone me so you wouldn’t have to suffer through this alone, or was there something else you wanted?” 

“We’ve got to take a stand!” Nigel declared. “It’s important to stop her before she endangers other guitars and becomes a menace to society.” 

David sighed gravely. “I’m afraid it’s too late to contact the authorities. If they approved of airing this, they must be in this fiend’s pockets already.” 

“We could get her blacklisted,” Nigel proposed, steepling his fingers. 

_Now there’s an idea!_ “We could. Who do you know who’s still in the business?” 

From Nigel’s glazed expression, it was hard to tell if he was searching his brain, or if that was simply the normal vacancy of his stare. David doubted he’d suss it out even if Nigel were standing right beside him. He sat back in his ergonomic reclining chair, pondering whether he knew anyone who was still active enough and powerful enough to put an end to this deviant’s activities. But all the names he came up with were those of executives who were either dead, mostly dead, non-practicing, fired due to sexual misconduct, or away on a sabbatical that could last up to a week or ten years, no one was certain. At any rate, _none_ of them had ever returned his calls.

“At the very least, we ought to show our support for guitars,” David finally offered. “Really make our stance known. I mean, that guitar could’ve gone to an underprivileged kid or a drummer who’s not getting enough attention, and she’s out here... wasting it.” He sadly shook his head. “This younger generation has got no sense of class.” 

“I’m not worried about the underprivileged,” Nigel argued. “It’s really the guitar itself that’s the problem, don’t you agree? Think about it! When I play guitar- which I’m not doing much of these days, but that’s beside the point- it’s like I’m making love to a woman. A very beautiful woman with a long neck and six strings of… metallic hair. I would never _dream_ of tossing a woman around like that, unless she was into it in a sort of, you know, sado-masochistic way.” 

“Yes, well, we're much too old for that scene now.” David scratched his head. “If nothing else works, we could donate to a pro-guitar charity…”

“With our own money?”

“Well, it would be the band’s money. I’m sure we can afford it. We just won that lawsuit, after all.”

“Do you know of any pro-guitar charities?” Nigel asked.

“...No…” David clasped his hands together, a brilliant idea dawning on him. “We could host a benefit show!”

“Like Live Aid?”

“Yes, like Live Aid.” _Only for a much nobler cause._ “We’d only have to raise enough to cover the damages done by… what’s her name again, Nige? Penelope or something?” 

“Phoebe.” 

“Yes. We’ll raise the funds to buy a new guitar, and we won’t let _Phoebe_ anywhere near it.” It was all starting to come together. “Let’s find a venue and book it now.”

“There’s your problem.” Nigel chewed his gum and raised his eyebrows. “They’d never allow it. Not when this virus has got everyone scared half to death.” 

“Well, we certainly can’t do it _virtually,”_ David complained. “We wouldn’t want Derek’s Internet addiction to come back _again._ Plus, no offense, mate, but we’re better off not inviting you if you’re going to use the same setup you’re using right now.” 

“None taken,” Nigel murmured. “So what are we supposed to do?”

They sat in silence for a moment, pondering over multiple options that had already been exhausted. Nothing that David could come up with seemed feasible or sound, but he knew that if he and Nigel sat idly by, he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

In the end, he suggested, “We could watch the video again.”

Profound confusion filled Nigel’s face. “Why?”

“Maybe if we watch it again, something will come to us,” David insisted. “You didn’t show me the whole thing, after all. The answer could’ve been right there under our noses, and I’d have never known it.”

“It’s your funeral,” Nigel muttered, but he heeded David’s request and turned on screen-sharing. In a few seconds, the waif called Phoebe and her ghastly band of skeletons had returned. When Nigel clicked play, David’s revulsion warred with his fascination.

“So this is what passes for rock and roll nowadays.” He chuckled haughtily. “What a disgrace.” 

“Anyone could play those notes,” Nigel scoffed. “I was writing riffs more complex than _that_ back in grade school! They’re not asking _me_ to play SNL.”

“But we _have_ played SNL,” David pointed out. 

“I know, but— not recently!” 

“Point taken.” Reluctantly, David turned his attention back to the performance. Again came the screaming, the thrashing about. Again the guitar went sailing into the speaker, but this time, he winced a little less. Now that he’d seen it again, it didn’t look like the guitar had been broken nearly as badly as he’d assumed. Though there was still no excuse for what its owner had done.

“Did you think of anything?” Nigel asked at the end of the video.

David shook his head, then remembered he was off-camera. “No. Still nothing.” It was a shame he hadn’t been able to hear the song’s lyrics better, if only to figure out what justified those kinds of theatrics. _Theatrics?_ Hastily his mind backtracked. There was nothing artistic in the act of smashing a guitar. He shouldn’t _praise_ her for making such a spectacle… _Spectacle?_

“Maybe we should watch it again,” Nigel said. Before David could react, he’d hit the button to replay the song. This time, David remained as engrossed as ever, trying not to tap his foot to the driving rhythm.

“I didn’t get any ideas that time either,” he confessed when the song ended. “Too distracted by those silly costumes.”

“Oh, well.” Nigel abruptly ended the screen-share, much to David’s dismay. He contemplatively chewed on his gum. “It was a good thought, anyway.”

“What’d you do that for?” David demanded. “Put it back onscreen!”

“Huh?”

“We should watch it again, one more time,” David said. “Just to be sure we’re out of ideas.”

“All right.” There was a surprising lack of reluctance in Nigel’s voice. “Just to let the outrage fester.”

“Festering is the best thing for outrage,” David assured Nigel. “You don’t want to pop it and immediately get it over with.”

Without another word, Nigel turned the screen-share back on. As he clicked play once again, David settled back into his seat. He still wasn’t pleased with the guitar-smashing, but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do all day. At this rate, he ought to go and make popcorn.

**Author's Note:**

> Opinions expressed in this fic are not mine; just words I felt like putting in the mouths of characters who are also not mine. Phoebe Bridgers rocks. So does Spinal Tap (I say without irony).
> 
> The performance in question is no longer available on YouTube due to music rights issues, but it can be found on Hulu and (presumably, I've never used it) Peacock under Dan Levy's SNL hosting gig from February 2021, in case anyone reading this is epically out of the loop.


End file.
